(OSV News) ─ Legislation to legalize assisted suicide in the United Kingdom appears headed for collapse, but local measures are advancing ─ drawing sharp criticism from Catholic leaders.
The imminent failure of the U.K.'s legislation allowing assisted suicide was announced Feb. 26 by advocacy groups.
"The assisted suicide Bill has today been widely pronounced as dead by commentators after it was revealed that it will 'almost certainly' run out of time in the House of Lords and will not become law after the Government Chief Whip in the Lords confirmed that the Government will not be committing any further time to the Bill," Right to Life UK said in a Feb. 26 statement.
Right to Life said that assisted suicide campaigners have "repeatedly claimed" that just seven members of the House of Lords have been blocking the bill by "tabling lots of amendments."
"A new analysis by Right To Life UK’s Public Affairs team has, however, confirmed that this spin from assisted suicide campaigners paints a deeply misleading picture of the actual situation in the House of Lords," the organization said.
"The analysis shows," it added, "that nearly 80 Peers (members of the House of Lords)
have so far tabled or signed amendments highlighting concerns with the Bill and that 131 Peers have either spoken against the Bill or signed amendments raising such concerns during its passage through the Lords."
While the general legislation may not pass in the British Parliament, local measures supporting the bill move on across Great Britain.
The Welsh regional parliament, known as the Senedd, in Cardiff Bay voted Feb. 24 in favor of allowing assisted-dying services to be provided by the National Health Service, or NHS, which is the U.K.'s publicly funded health care system.
The vote does not legalize assisted suicide in Wales, but instead allows for NHS to oversee assisted dying services should the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill pass in the House of Lords where it currently faces enormous opposition.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, tabled by a member of Parliament from the governing Labour Party, would permit physician-assisted suicide for those terminally ill who are over 18 with six months or less to live, who show evidence of a "clear, settled and informed wish to end their life."
In a statement published Feb. 25, Archbishop Mark O'Toole of Cardiff-Menevia said the passing of the Welsh legislation marked "a very sad day for the most vulnerable in Wales."
"The vote in the Senedd in which a majority have indicated support for assisted suicide being available through the NHS is deeply disappointing," the archbishop said. "The situation in other countries shows that the safeguards do not hold up."
In Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, legislators approved an assisted dying law, similar to one passed in 2025 in the Isle of Man. According to the BBC, 32 politicians voted in favor of it, while 16 voted against it.
Deputy Philip Bailhache, a Jersey politician who voted against the bill, said that while he was in "favor of compassion," he did not approve of the law.
"Life is a precious thing and I don't think really that it's for people to remove life in the way in which the assisted dying law is now going to authorize," Bailhache said, according to the BBC.
"I think there are very deep ethical issues involved in this subject, and I'm not sure what the outcome is going to be. I fear that it will change the community of Jersey in a way in which we may not yet be able to foresee," he said.
Care Not Killing, a U.K.-based organization that opposes euthanasia and promotes palliative care, issued a statement Feb. 26 saying the legislation in Jersey faces obstacles, including compliance and compatibility issues with the European Convention on Human Rights and the U.K.'s obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
"We need to care for people who are suffering, not encourage them or provide them with a mechanism to end their lives. This is why we champion the extension of high-quality palliative care to all those who need it and better support for their families. This is the real progressive agenda, and why we argue for care not killing," said Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing.
Despite local legislation approving the assisted dying law, Sky News reported that the U.K. Parliament bill will "almost certainly fail" due to a lack of parliamentary time to fully debate it.
According to the report, Roy Kennedy, the Labour government's chief whip in the House of Lords, confirmed that the government will not allocate additional debate time to the bill before the May deadline, when all legislation must have passed or automatically falls.
The bill's own supporters confirmed they now expect the legislation in its current form to collapse. According to the BBC, legislators submitted 1,200 proposed changes to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, in a move that supporters characterized as deliberate obstruction.
However, opponents say the amendments are necessary for members of the House of Lords to properly scrutinize the bill.
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Junno Arocho Esteves is an international correspondent for OSV News. Follow him on X @jae_journalist. Jonathan Luxmoore contributed to this article from Oxford, England.
